While Indian groups in the New World had competed over territorial
privileges long before the arrival of Europeans, Euro-American encounters overturned previous compromises, as
Europeans staked national claims and colonists sought land for themselves. Print, which Europeans relied upon
when legitimating land claims, became a weapon in these struggles.

Maps helped to define and enforce European geographical conceptions, by dividing
the Americas into national territories and by pushing Indian groups into ever smaller areas. Such cartographic
assertions took on particular importance in contested North America, where the English,
the Dutch, and the French staked out large
territories.

Legal texts could only partially reconcile divisive land conflicts - usually in
favor of the dominant group. In New Spain, the Spanish allotted settlers rights to land and Indian labor
(encomiendas). León Pinelo produced a survey of existing
encomiendas in 1630.

In North America, where conquest was not so rapid, colonial leaders
became negotiators, and the treaty became the principal written genre of intercultural communication. New
England's colonial agents encouraged Algonquian tribes to declare "submission" to the
English, an act which either limited tribal access to territory or eliminated it altogether.

The Iroquois were successful, as least until the American Revolution, in
maintaining their strategic position between New France, New York, and Pennsylvania. Treaties like those
published by Cadwallader Colden demonstrate Iroquois willingness to give
up territory but also resistance to European definitions of land and ownership.